42 O HENRY - 100 S E L E C T E D STORIES

of bric-a-brac, scent and ice-cream soda. If you ask it for a pain-killer

it will not give you a bonbon.
The Blue Light scorns the labour-saving arts of modern phar­
macy. It macerates its opium and percolates its own laudanum and
paregoric. To this day pills are made behind its tall prescription
desk - pills rolled out on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula,
rolled with the finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia
and delivered in little round, pasteboard pill-boxes. The store is on
a corner about which coveys of ragged-plumed, hilarious children
play and become candidates for the cough-drops and soothing
syrups that wait for them inside.
Ikey Schoenstein was the night clerk of the Blue Light and the
friend of his customers. Thus it is on the East Side, where the
heart of pharmacy is not glacé. There, as it should be, the druggist
is a counsellor, a confessor, an adviser, an able and willing mis­
sionary and mentor whose learning is respected, whose occult
wisdom is venerated and whose medicine is often poured,
untasted, into the gutter. Therefore Ikey's corniform, bespecta­
cled nose and narrow, knowledge-bowed figure was well known in
the vicinity of the Blue Light, and his advice and notice were
much desired.
Ikey roomed and breakfasted at Mrs. Riddle's, two squares
away. Mrs. Riddle had a daughter named Rosy. The circumlocu­
tion has been in vain - you must have guessed it - Ikey adored
Rosy. She tinctured all his thoughts; she was the compound
extract of all that was chemically pure and officinal - the dispen­
satory contained nothing equal to her. But Ikey was timid, and his
hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum of his backwardness
and fears. Behind his counter he was a superior being, calmly
conscious of special knowledge and worth; outside, he was a
weak-kneed, purblind, motorman-cursed rambler, with ill-fitting
clothes stained with chemicals and smelling of socotrine aloes and
valerianate of ammonia.
The fly in Ikey's ointment (thrice welcome, pat trope!) was
Chunk McGowan.
Mr. McGowan was also striving to catch the bright smiles
tossed about by Rosy. But he was no out-fielder as Ikey was; he
picked them off the bat. At the same time he was Ikey's friend and
customer, and often dropped in at the Blue Light Drug Store to
have a bruise painted with iodine or get a cut rubber-plastered
after a pleasant evening spent along the Bowery.
One afternoon McGowan drifted in in his silent, easy way, and